MOT Tour Day 70 - Lyons Home Hill

Tomorrow ...

It was back to Jacqueline’s this morning for a coffee to start the day before a drive to the southern suburbs and Home Hill, the married home of Joe and Enid Lyons. Earlier in the Tour, at Stanley, we had visited the birth home of Australia’s 10th Prime Minister. This proved to be something very different.

Enid had come from a small village near Smithton, about 40kms from where Joe was born. Her father was a devil-may-care drinker described as a “swashbuckler” at the time. Her mother was the opposite, insistent on her girls being competent musicians and conversationalists and to have an education.

When Enid met Joe, she was roughly half his age and a member of the state parliament - he would go to be Premier before the move to Canberra - but they fell heavily for each other and would remain besotted throughout their quarter of a century marriage before Joe died in office of a heart attack at the premature age of 59. This only months after begging his party to let him stand down but being talked into another twelve months.

The house on Home Hill is almost all distinctly Enid. It not only has her unique decorating style but so many quirky structural innovations that she not only thought of herself but in almost all cases, did the actual work. The Lyons had no domestic staff, despite Joe’s seven years in the PM’s chair or the seven years Enid sat in the House of Representatives in Canberra (the first female to do so) and despite raising eleven children.

There are four places in the house where Enid decided she wanted to change the traffic flow or purpose of a room. Rather than wall the doorway up, she converted into a glass doored cabinet. There are windows in the most unusual of places, such as a long narrow window above a bookcase to change the lighting in the library. One of the bedrooms has an entire wall converted to cupboards but it’s the wall the doorway is in, so that from the doorway, the room appears to have no cupboards. Outside, dry stone walls have been erected around natural ponds. The stone, made from the bedrock basalt, has been chipped and split down to size. Enid did all the work herself. Same with the second hand furniture she populated the house with. She researched - in the days before Google - and did the work herself.

The library with its repurposed door
in the corner.

They were close friends of America’s reigning Roosevelts and the King and his family in England. Whilst he was respected by other politicians, he was not particularly close with many. The ALP despised him for leaving the party when he was PM and the conservatives didn’t really trust him for the same reason.

All agreed that Enid was the powerhouse driving the more affable and forgiving Joe.

When Joe died, Enid - by then Dame Enid - was sat down to start the planning for his state funeral. Her response was to fly into a rage. “You’ve had him for the last seven years. Now he’s mine.” He would be buried simply, with his family around him. Soon after, her own “official” career started in politics.

Our guide, Derek, retold their lives well, using some facts but many anecdotes which gave the experience colour and a true reflection of how “ordinary” they both were. The house remains as it was when Enid died, not how it has been coloured up with facsimiles.

It was one of the better tours of significant houses in history we have experienced.

Click here for today's photos.

The rest of the day was wasted but it’s of no consequence at this stage of the Tour. A visit to a steam train museum fell through when it was closed. A visit to an arboretum met a similar fate because the volunteers managing on the day didn’t have access to card readers for the day: plus we re-met a couple I wasn’t keen on. Sue went off to find some alleged platypus and believes she saw them … but no pictures were submitted in evidence. Doesn't mean she didn't see them. If I had a dollar for every spot we were guaranteed to see a platypus because yesterday the bloke on site 23 had seen one there ... I went back to the car to sulk.

Last day in Tassie tomorrow. We sail on the return voyage tomorrow night.

TOD Tour, Day 78 - Lost the GPS

Our night at Funny Dunny Park was so quiet we slept like logs. The stars on display, were bright, despite the interference of half of a big white glow and well known constellations were easily identified.

The drive to Townsville was to be leisurely one, with some interesting sights to see on the way. An unexpected one greeted us before we could even return to the Bruce Highway, when we caught sight of two mobs of Brolgas, numbering almost forty birds in all. Binoculars and the reliable Simpson & Day confirmed outer sighting and although they weren't dancing, their call were travelling the two hundred and fifty metres back to us.

We reached our first stop at Home Hill fairly quickly and stopped to gather information from the tourist information office and to check out the Burdekin Council's initiative called Comfort Stop.

Comfort Stop is a toilet and shower facility built beside long bay parking in the centre of town, where long road users may stop for up to 48 hours and use the facilities free of charge. At a time when other councils across Australia are jumping to the tune of local caravan park owners and removing free camps, the Burdekin Council deserve applause. Home Hill itself seems like a really friendly place. First the council guy mowing the lawns stopped his machine because we parked nearby and had a long chat with us about the facility and some good things to see locally. Damian was a lovely, friendly and naturally gregarious bloke. Then Gloria, in the information office, went out of her way to provide us with things we might need while we were in the area, including an insiders snippet of information which we would use soon after. The information centre has a permanent display about the high level rail and road bridge that took ten years to build following the Second World War and changed the social and economic future of Northern Queensland.

Brilliant stuff.

The bridge was a replacement for a low level rail bridge that had ben periodically damaged or removed by floods in the broad Burdekin River when it comes down. The rails dipped in the middle so that the flood water would be deep over them and not damaged. It was a failed piece of engineering that never worked. The new bridge was a remarkable feat of engineering for its time, mostly because of the long distance it has to span at this stage in the Burdekin's journey to the sea. It contains 7000 tons of steel and 300 000 high tensile steel rivets. It took so long to build because governments kept running out of money!

Using that information from Gloria, we are able to negotiate so tracks to get ourselves to the spot where the last of the approach joined the actual bridge structure, climb a staircase and stand at the side of the carriageway. It was more than a view, looking across the largely dry river bed and the old pylons of the original rail bridge. Once a few trucks rolled past, it became a visceral experience, the whole structure shaking beneath and around us.

Our day devolved quickly from there.

Returning to the car, we discovered that the GPS had gone on the fritz. After an hour of googling and a few phone calls, it was clear that the SD card had malfunctioned, so it was a straight drive to Townsville and a meeting with the Subaru dealer before they shut. Afternoon given over to an annoying fault. The upshot was a booking for Friday and a probable repair two weeks later in Cairns.

I could be grand and say it's back to maps but let's be real ... we'll be filling the void with Google Maps.

We are also hoping to get a UHF fitted for the more remote parts of the journey ahead.  

Magnetic Island tomorrow.